A group of Indigenous people who were evicted from their
ancestral village in Nagarhole Tiger Reserve in south India
40 years ago have returned to their former
homes.
It’s believed to be the first time Indigenous
people in India have asserted their rights in this way, and
returned en masse to their homes after being evicted from a
Protected Area.
More than 50 Jenu Kuruba families took
part in the long-planned operation, and have started
building houses using their traditional materials and
techniques. The Jenu Kuruba say they decided to return
because their sacred spirits, who still dwell in the old
village location, became angry at being abandoned when the
community was forced from the forest in the
1980s.
Forest department officials, backed up by
police, warned the Jenu Kuruba against re-occupying their
homes, but the Indigenous people castigated them for
delaying the recognition of their forest rights for years,
and went ahead anyway. Today around 130 police officers and
forest guards were on the scene, and prevented journalists
from accessing the area.
Shivu, a young Jenu Kuruba
leader, said today: “Historical injustice continues to
happen over us by denying our rights on our lands, forests
and access to sacred spaces. Tiger conservation is a scheme
of the forest department and various wildlife NGO’s to
grab indigenous lands by forcefully moving us out, but
opening the very same lands in the pretext of tourism to
make money
We have to today returned to our home lands
and forests. we will remain here. Our sacred sprits are with
us.”
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Jenu Kuruba families begin to construct a house
for their ancestors, as they rebuild their old village
inside Nagarhole National Park. ©Sartaz Ali Barkat/
Survival
In a statement the Jenu Kuruba of Nagarhole
said: “Enough is Enough. We can’t part from our lands
anymore. We want our children and youth to live a life that
our ancestors once lived. Tigers, elephants, peacocks, wild
boar, wild dogs are our deities. We have been worshipping
them as our ancestral spirits since generations. This
deliberate attempt to separate us from our lands, forests
and sacred spaces will not be tolerated. We resist the
current conservation model based on the false idea that
forests, wildlife and humans cannot coexist.”
For
decades it has been official policy in India, as in many
other countries around the world, to evict Indigenous people
whose lands are turned into Protected Areas, a practice
known as Fortress Conservation.
An estimated 20,000
Jenu Kuruba people have been illegally evicted from
Nagarhole. Another 6,000 resisted, and have managed to stay
in the park.
The Jenu Kuruba’s belief system centers
around their connection to the forest, its wildlife, and
their gods – including the tigers who live there – but
forest guards harass, threaten, and even shoot members of
the tribe.
Jenu Kuruba people are experts in their
environment. They gather medicine, honey, fruits,
vegetables, tubers, and the thatch and bamboo needed to
build their houses.
Famed for their honey collecting
skills – Jenu Kuruba means “honey collectors” – they
are guided from birth to death by the philosophy “Nanga
Kadu Ajjayya… Nanga Kadina Jenu Ajjayya – Our forests
are sacred… The honey from our forest is
sacred.”
Those beliefs underpin the tribe’s
careful management of their environment and have ensured
tiger survival. Indeed, the healthy tiger population found
in their forest is what drove the Indian government to turn
the area into a Tiger Reserve. It has one of the highest
concentrations of tigers in all of India.
Caroline
Pearce, Director of Survival International, said today:
“The Jenu Kuruba people’s re-occupation of their
ancestral land is an inspirational act of repossession.
They’re reclaiming what was theirs, in defiance of a
hugely powerful conservation and tourism industry that has
enriched itself at their expense.
“If the Indian
government really cares about tiger conservation, it will
not only allow the Jenu Kuruba people to return, but
encourage them to do so – because the science is clear
that tigers thrive alongside the Indigenous people whose
forests they live
in.”
